RBC Royal Bank’s Journey to Simplify Customer Support

After leading Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) through a digital transformation that successfully improved its customer support, it is no surprise that Tracy Metzger will be a featured speaker at a conference focused on discovering the best technology and enterprise solutions for financial companies.

Next month, RBC’s Senior Manager Business Digital Channels, Tracey Metzger, will be speaking at the 2017 T3 Advisory Conference. At the conference Tracey will discuss the journey RBC took to improve the bank’s customer support by providing a simpler support experience.

In preparation for the conference, Emilia D’Anzica, VP Customer Engagement at WalkMe, connected with Tracey to touch base on the challenges RBC faced and benefits she has experienced in leveraging WalkMe’s Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) for customer support.

Emilia D’Anzica: As a fellow Canadian, I grew up with Royal Bank of Canada, but for those new to the bank, can you tell us a little about the institution?

Tracey Metzger: RBC is one of Canada’s largest banks and one of the largest banks in the world, based on market capitalization. We are one of North America’s leading diversified financial services companies, and provide personal and commercial banking, wealth management, insurance, investor services and capital markets products and services on a global basis.

We have over 80,000 full- and part-time employees who serve more than 16 million personal, business, public sector and institutional clients through offices in Canada, the U.S. and 36 other countries.

Emilia: What challenges are RBC and other banking institutions facing in regards to digital customer support?

Tracey: As day-to-day business activities become more dependent on the digital channels, confusion and complexity have increased dramatically.

RBC’s business banking and treasury platform, RBC Express Online Banking, needed a solution to help our clients navigate and transact in the platform. To meet client’s evolving expectations while we work on improving the overall user experience, RBC needed to provide self-help and training in a way that is easy and intuitive for clients.

Emilia: At the beginning of the process of finding a solution, what were you looking for? What was important?

Tracey: RBC wanted to develop an “in-the-moment help” tool for RBC Express online banking users, providing accurate and relevant page/field level help to improve users’ ability to self-resolve their questions and thereby reduce calls to our Call Centre, and reduce requests for higher cost one-on-one training. We wanted to be able to anticipate the wants and needs of our clients who are setting up administration functions on the site, and also guide them step-by-step when performing financial transactions.

In addition, RBC wanted a support tool that is flexible and easily applied to future enhancements.

One of the challenges was locating a vendor that allowed for the tight security that many financial institutions follow. A self-hosted model was an option from WalkMe, indicating that they were able to accommodate our requirements.

Emilia: Now, we know you chose WalkMe, but can you explain why our Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) was the right fit to achieve your goals?

Tracey: WalkMe makes the online experience as easy as possible for everyone – clarifying any task for any website. WalkMe’s technology focuses the users’ attention on the screen and takes them step-by-step through a series of “bubbles” to different elements on the web-page which may need explanation.

RBC is now able to collect details of flows that are successful, and more importantly which ones are not being used. This allows us to make changes immediately to make the client’s experience the most meaningful. For example, when we noticed that users were searching for help on a service that did not have WalkMe enabled, we were able to manage the gap and develop the much-needed content to publish immediately using the WalkMe Editor.

The WalkMe software also offers sophisticated page elements that can interact with the page alongside the users. Use cases range from providing step by step instructions for more complex processes like submitting a wire payment, to high level instruction for page navigation. WalkMe will offer step-by-step guidance to complete a transaction, and provide contextual access to support material such as videos, user guides, tutorials, etc. from within the transaction.

Emilia: So after seeing the results WalkMe has had on RBC’s customer support, can you elaborate what has stood out for you?

Tracey: Since launching WalkMe on the business channel, RBC has seen a positive take up by our users, both existing and new. The ability to target a specific type of client (administrator, 1st time user, etc.) has resulted in a reduction in support requests. Since we launched WalkMe, the adoption of services by new users to the channel has increased.

RBC staff uses WalkMe Analytics to identify which Walk-Thrus are not being used, and uses the WalkMe Editor to make changes immediately. WalkMe makes it easy to create and publish new online content quickly, providing us with a more robust way of educating our clients.

About Tracey Metzger

Tracey Metzger works for RBC Royal Bank as the Senior Manager Business Digital Channels and is responsible for RBC’s business digital channel. Her strategic mandate provides RBC clients the best digital experience possible and has created an intuitive self-serve channel. Holding a wide range of positions within Head Office, Tracey has worked on strategy, operational improvements, and technology changes. Her end to end knowledge has helped RBC Express Online Banking become a world class application. A supporter of Toronto Humane Society and the Toronto Feral Cat Colony Organization Tracey currently maintains her own 10 cat colony. Tracey lives in Toronto with her husband and their two sons and Great Dane Lincoln.

Emilia is the VP of Customer Engagement at WalkMe, a real-time guidance platform. She is a certified Scrum master, PMP certified project manager, blogger and a frequent speaker at conferences. In the span of her career, Emilia has received numerous awards for being a top client service manager and leader, including the 2017 MindTouch Top 25 Customer Success Influencers.
Emilia holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of British Columbia and a Trans-global Executive MBA from St. Mary's College of California. Emilia speaks fluent Italian and has lived and worked in Italy, Denmark, France, Canada, and the US.